The spring of 1863 found the strategic city of Vicksburg on the Mississippi under attack from Grant’s forces, leading to a six-week trial by siege, starvation, and devastation that led to its ultimate surrender. Author Jeff Shaara brings the stories of both soldiers and civilians to vivid life.

Recently digitized files from the Library of Congress were hiding lost treasures: charming songs from quickly vanished 1930s Hollywood and Broadway productions that went unheard for decades. Now, Three for a Song (pianist and musical archivist Alex Hassan and singers Douglas Bowles and Kari Paludan) have collected the best, polished them to a stylish period sheen, and are ready give these tunes the second chance they never got.

A romantic archaeologist, a brilliant classical scholar, and a haunted architect were linked by an obsession: an unknown language whose secrets held the key to a vanished civilization that flourished a millennium before Greece’s Classical Age. Author Margalit Fox tells a true story that spans 3,500 years.

Animals and humans get the same diseases. Drawing on the latest in medical and veterinary science as well as evolutionary and molecular biology, the authors of a new book explore how jaguar breast cancer, dolphin diabetes, flamingo heart attacks, and more cross-species ailments are transforming human medicine.

For all his importance in Christian theology, we have a surprisingly incomplete historical picture of the Apostle Paul. Yale’s Dale B. Martin looks at him in the social and cultural context of the Greco-Roman world, and imagines what Paul’s biography might look like if we could assemble it.

Two veterans of the FBI’s Behavioral Science and Analysis Units reveal why the real-life hunt for notorious offenders is more complex—and often more dangerous—than what fans of crime shows may see.